Probate Marketing Help

[Matt Foster]

Question for my Southeast Michigan members or anyone else with similar circumstances.  I've been direct mailing probates for a few months now and it's been going relatively well.  But as my list grows it's making me more and more uncomfortable with the nasty phone calls and social media posts I'm getting.  And to be honest I feel terrible about it because 95% of the negative feedback is coming from widows who just lost their partner and have no desire to sell their house.  I don't want to mail to them obviously but the problem I'm having is that I don't know how to accurately remove these people from my list.  

Here's what I get.  Detroit Legal News publishes the list of new probates which I put onto an excel file.  I get the name of the decedent, the attorney and the personal rep's name & address.  I don't know if these estates have real estate or what relationship the PR has with the decedent.  Since I don't have the address of the decedent I can't cross reference with the PR name.  So I'm at a loss.  

Going to the courthouse and pulling individual files is just not feasible.  Are there any other tricks that you use to get a better list?  The only thing I can think of is to eliminate all entries that have the same last name of the PR and decedent realizing that I'm getting rid of potential siblings, children, cousins, etc.  Solves my problem but eliminates so many that I would otherwise mail to.  

Thoughts? 

[Sharon Vornholt]

Hey @McKinley Crowley  - You know how I love probates. 

Probates have been my number one source of leads for more than a decade.  These folks almost always have to sell the house.  It's just a matter of whether they list it or sell it to an investor.  I have been very successful with direct mail campaigns. I personally never call them unless they have first called me.  I believe understanding the mindset of those folks going through that process is one of the main reasons I have been successful.

I don't call them because someone they love has passed away, and for more than a decade I have heard how much they hate and resent the insensitive intrusion.  I personally don't mail to surviving spouses.  It's not a foolproof system, the I do a pretty good job of figuring out if they have one on the tax assessor's site.  

I'm very lucky here (Louisville KY) because the information is in the newspaper.  You only need 4 pieces of information. The name and address of the deceased, and the PR.  Sometimes that is an attorney, but not usually.  One more place to look is online.  Here, there is something called online records.  Wills are published there. So for instance, when the probates come out once a month, I could look up the wills for that same month and often find missing or additional  information.

There are 3300+ counties in the US, and everyone is a little bit different. You're going to have to do some detective work (and this is where most people quit). If you're willing to do the work, you can help a lot of people. And for agents, the field of probates is wide open.   

One thing I would like to mention is that I only use white, computer generated, personalized letters.  You need to do a mail merge so you are talking to one person.  Also, use standard #10 envelopes.  This is a niche where you don't want to send them something in an odd sized or colored envelope. The last thing you want to happen is for them to open an envelope that looks like a sympathy card.  I have written a lot about probates on my blog and here on BP.  I hope this helps.